Single-handed Theology - Nisi Dominus Frustra

Nisi Dominus Frustra

(An abbreviation of the Latin words of Psalm 121.)

Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labour in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain.
In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat – for he grants sleep to those he loves.

Quite simply, without the Lord, frustration!!

How many bricks have I laid of my own accord, how many times have I propped open a watchful eye, busy into the night, laboring under the false impression that it is I who must build, guard and provide for my own house?

How many of us have taken up God’s name and affixed it to our title, stomping around in boots to big for us to fill, glorying in the justification of our own exhaustion? How many sleepless nights before it all unravels in vanity and frustration?

We chase the wind, and meanwhile the house crumbles.

So I pray,

Teach me Your builder’s craft, so every stone I lay is part of Your plan.
Teach me to align my work with Yours, so my energy is not wasted.
Teach me to trust, resting in Your provision.
Teach me to rest, trusting Your eye never sleeps,
and that Your love is at work all through the night.

You are the Builder, Watchman and Provider of this house.

Nisi Dominus Frustra.


~lg

small seeds

These seeds are small and out of season
Leaves are falling, yet I scatter, scatter
Sowing hopes too slight to name
Tossing them out to the mercy of the elements
With a tiny whisper to the four winds
Breathe, oh breathe on these fallen
That they may live

~lg

Just breathe

Take a deep breath.

When it’s the end of a long day and there are still so many things to do, when you are tired and feeling guilty about being tired, when you just don’t have the mental fortitude to finish what you’ve begun, just breathe.

Breathe.

And turn that breath into a prayer, exhaling all the depleted energy you cannot transform, offering the only thing you can at the moment, which is your weakness. Then inhale, invoking the sacred Name that can only be whispered by the poor in spirit, and feel your lungs expand with life that is not your own.

Breathe until you remember this life is your own, given for this moment and the ones to come. This is the Spirit-Breath of God, by which all things are once again possible.

Just breathe.


~lg

This My Salvation

Driving home on a country road, the moon hangs, suspended glow over the trees and I remember how I have found saving grace in its light. And I begin to think about this my salvation.

My salvation has been a matter of preservation. How can the faith of a five year old be kept fresh all these years? How does it keep from going stale?

Only because God has sent his daily bread, manna from heaven, each morning and evening. It is only the mystery of grace, falling from the sky. Last year’s bread is long gone, and even yesterday’s will not be enough for today. He has renewed me constantly, opening his hand and providing food in season.

It has drifted down in the mercy of snow. It has been the moon, a silver wafer offered to unclean lips. It has been every word proceeding from his mouth, plucked from the fields of Scripture. It has been gathered on my blistered knees, searching desperately for just the crumbs from his table.

This is bread I have not baked. This preservation is not of my doing. I have only opened my hands, my mouth willingly, to receive what he gives.

Oh I have at times been seated at the table of fools, eating the cake of deception, frosting gone to dust and ashes on my tongue. I have tried to hoard and hide, stubbornly feasting on my own fermentation. I have nearly starved on self-reliance because I would not get up and gather his provision. I have turned his grace aside, only to find there is nothing else.

Nothing but manna, and what is it? and some days I cannot tell, I cannot taste, I cannot know how what has fallen can be what is good. I can only eat, and yet I can testify that brokenness has become wholeness, because all manna is from the mystery of the one loaf, broken for all.

He is bread and bread is life, and I must eat or die. And this is how I live. This is how I am saved, this is how he saves me even now.

And falling grace leaves rainbow trails in the rain clouds and rises bigger than the moon on a September night, reminders that this His salvation is all around.


~lg

The Heavens Declare

The way the early autumn light is bounding and resounding around the world this morning is a marvelous thing.

Those particle-waves are racing through the atmosphere, gathering every shade of cerulean and azure in the spectrum, spreading them wide over my horizon.

Every photosynthesizing leaf is practically bursting with new energy, gathering our faded breath and exploding into songs of oxygen green.

Rich rusty red oozes out of the pores of the earth, a super-saturation of organic overflow, making decomposition a thing of beauty.

Even brown reveals its subtle personalities in the mown hay fields, the cud-chewing creatures across the road, the flash of feather in the air.

And, marvel of marvels, it my eye that is able to catch what this kinetic spectacle flings out, to render the nuclear language of the sun into these colourful phrases.

Me, praying with eyes to see, spherical windows washed clean by the light, till I can feel the glory of God pierce my soul at 300 million metres per second.


~lg

late summer praise

Six sunflowers stand tall in a vase on the middle of the table, saluting the morning. They are stretching from night’s slumber, waking to the light, turning, turning. Bowed heads lift and faces open in bold yellow praise as they find their Creator.

We bought them at Hope River farm last night as the evening light cast long shadows on our way home from the beach. We bought honey too, and met the chickens, and saw how raw wool was brought into line with steady hands and a spinning wheel. But the sunflowers, acres of them, were top billing last night. Hundreds and hundreds in straight rows, all facing the same direction, a congregation of sun worshipers.

This is what sunflowers do, and I can’t help but wonder if they were created to do just this, to remind us to turn to the Sun, that our fitting posture is one which stands tall in bright worship, showing others the way. As the Countenance shines down, we lift ours up, and it is right to give our thanks and praise.


~lg

Honestly

Heritage isn’t enough to keep faith alive
We assent to textbook beliefs
Without seeing proof of their existence
And are supposed to teach what we have never touched
No wonder we go looking elsewhere
For ideas to make sense of life as we actually live it

Do we box up the old time religion as a relic of the past?
Do we drag out dead puppets and make them dance?
Or do we acknowledge our decay
And pray for the miracle of resurrection?


~lg

Rich Mullins - Calling Out Your Name

~lg

Thunder

Thunder rumbles me out of my bed
To stand at the windowpane, watching
Feeling the absence of the wind that signals the coming tempest,
The atmosphere’s vacuum, drawing me out of my skin and into the grey gathering clouds

Thunder rumbles and Arden looks to the window, wondering
Not afraid, just curious, looking to me to explain, to make safe
How do I wrap the words around thunder?
How do I tell her it is deep calling to deep,
All the ancient longings galloping over the plains to throw themselves off the cliff,
The shaking of everything that can be shaken,
The roll of the drums vibrating with a resonance that awakens the taut skins within
Till hearts skip beats to join in the dance of the Sky King?

Thunder rumbles and I wrap my arms around her
And we stand together at the window, waiting
I can never make it safe
Only make it welcome


~lg

"The Real Work"

by Wendell Berry

"It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings."


~lg

Letters to Arden - July 11, 2011

Dear Arden,

Will I remember these moments?

The way our noses touch after your bath, you all but hidden in a towel, soft skin, downy hair, bright eyes, our terry cloth cuddles.

The way your head falls on my shoulder, turning in toward the hollow of my neck on our way up the stairs, sharing our lullaby, your little smile and wave as you pull the blanket close.

The pure glee that escapes your lips as you step outside on Daddy’s shoulders, delighted by wind and trees and sea, arms outstretched to welcome it all.

A thousand little moments that take my breath away and replace it with something better – love.


~ mama

Hawk Tag

And then I see a little bird, sparrow or swallow I cannot tell, chasing a hawk through the great blue sky. My eyes are drawn up in amusement as the little one flits and darts, circling the powerful strokes of the bird of prey. Is it a game? Is it an argument? The little one dives straight for the hawk’s head and gets away with a playful peck, and the hawk gives her the eye – annoyance? bemusement? – and shifts his flight path. Still she follows, short wing bursts in contrast to the steady soaring, disappearing now behind the trees. I am laughing at nature’s joke, thankful to be lifted out of my valley into the mirth of the heavens.

I know I am but small, not used to thin air, but oh how I want to follow! Will you let me tag along? Will I ever grow wings big and strong? You turn your eye and laugh, tilt your head and turn into the breeze . . . but you take me into your current and the joke’s on me, for now I am rising on your wings.


~lg

a wing and a prayer

A surprise
Graced by the presence, magnificent,
of two bald eagles
Strength and beauty circling each other
in playful dignity over the river

Oh, for such a wingspan to take in the world, to embrace the globe's rippling breath, to see the straightest line between two points and yet take the scenic route

They call to each other, to me
Come up here
And I want to fly away

Where?
Deeper into this earthbound spirit-ache and then perhaps out the other side
...

level ground

Isaiah 40:3-5

You fill the valley of the lowly, shaping firm steps upward, raising the downcast up to where they can see the sun again. You are a swollen river, rushing, flooding, filling us with faith till we walk on water, walk on up this liquid escalator of joy.

You demolish the mountain of the proud, shaking the steps of the haughty till self-sufficiency crumbles in the quake. You are a sweeping torrent, rushing, a rapid wave that sweeps us over the falls and down to the exalted plain of humility.

Where the horizons meet, we see each other face to face, and there meet Grace. We are all on level ground.


~lg

Pilgrim Song (Psalm 121)

I look up into the crags as the storm approaches,
fearful of the slippery steps, aching feet weary already.
Will you help me over them?
Your ways are high, too high for us . . .

Yet as the wind blows fierce in my face,
I am reminded that you made the wind and the crags,
you made these feet.

If it all seems too much, I know you will build a strength in me I have never known.
The steeper the crag, the stronger my foot will be.

You, my Strength, are my Keeper
You will keep me on your path
Sheltering me from the driving rain
Creating moments of refuge beneath your wings

Your breath is at my back, and it is stronger than the gale.

And when I am weary and worn, I will sing
For your joy is my strength and your strength is my song

Your presence is a Pilgrim with me.


~lg